From social casework to low-intensity psychosocial interventions: Repositioning psychiatric social work in contemporary mental health care

Abstract

The persistent mental health treatment gap has increased interest in psychological and psychosocial interventions (PSI) that can extend care beyond specialist services. The World Health Organization (WHO) has promoted scalable and low-intensity interventions such as Problem Management Plus (PM+), Self-Help Plus (SH+), Thinking Healthy and Step-by-Step, using structured strategies, task-sharing, guided self-help and stepped care. Although these approaches are relatively recent in global mental health, several of their underlying principles have longstanding parallels in professional social work, particularly social casework, psychosocial casework, problem-solving, task-centred and strengths-based practice. This editorial examines the relationship between these traditions and contemporary low-intensity psychosocial interventions and considers their implications for Psychiatric Social Work (PSW). Low intensity refers to reduced specialist input, not reduced professional skill or responsibility. PSWs, with expertise in psychosocial assessment, casework, family intervention, rehabilitation and community practice, are well positioned to contribute to the delivery, adaptation, supervision and evaluation of such interventions. However, effective task-sharing requires competency-based training, supervision, risk assessment, fidelity and clear pathways for referral and escalation. Integrating the intervention traditions of social work with contemporary evidence-based and scalable approaches may strengthen the role of PSW in accessible, community-oriented mental health care.

Keywords: Social casework; psychosocial intervention; low-intensity intervention; scalable intervention; task-centred practice; task-sharing; stepped care